How to Measure Your Facebook Reach Locally

How many Facebook users does your business reach locally?  How many total Facebook users are in the local market?  Simple questions that are easily measured and tracked using existing information that is readily available.  Most business owners I speak with don't have the first clue what these figure are.

If you own a retail store, restaurant, nightclub or other venue that generates a majority of its revenue on a local basis, measuring and growing your Facebook reach on a local basis may have a profound impact on the overall health of your business.  Here's how.

Step 1. Determine quantity of Facebook users in local market.

Step 2. Determine quantity of Facebook users that "Like" your business.

Step 3. Determine baseline percent.

Step 4. Create your Smart Goal.

Step 5. Act and measure.

Step 1.  To determine how many Facebook users are in the local market you have to look at Facebook "Ads".  You don't have to actually create an ad but you do have to open the ad application and select the City in the Choose Your Audience section.  Enter your City and the quantity of Facebook users will populate automatically.  You can also specify by zip code.

In this example I would be targeting the zip code of 90210 which has over 323,000 Facebook users.

For full documentation and creating a Facebook ad see https://www.facebook.com/business

Step 2.  To determine how many Facebook users "Like" your business, simply look at your Insights page, "Likes" selection.  The section labelled "Cities" details "The number of people that liked your Page as of xx/xx/xxxx broken down by city.  This is based on the users estimated home location.

Step 3.  You now have the two figures necessary to determine your "Reach".  This creates your baseline percentage.

Step 4.  Determine what "Reach" goal is.  Want  to maintain the current percentage?  Double it?  Triple it?  Remember to make your goal a SMART Goal for better results.

Your SMART Goal might read something like; the marketing department (or specific person) of Business X will increase local Facebook reach from X% to Y% of overall local Facebook users in the next X days.

So it might read something like; Mary will increase local Facebook reach from 15% to 25% of overall local Facebook users in the next 60 days.

If you need a refresher on SMART Goals I do into further detail in the article Ensure Your Social Media Efforts are Paying Off.

Step 5.  Act on your new initiative and measure your results at the end of each month. Ask your customers to "Like" your business on Facebook. This can be done in your venue with signage, in print ads, using Facebook ads and landing pages, on radio, any number of ways that fit your budget and goals.